Arcanum (97 page)

“Nikoleta Agana wasn’t your enemy.”

“She would have become one.”

“Is that you or Ullmann talking, Felix, because I can’t tell the difference any more.” There was no doubt that having a hexmaster around would have complicated everything they’d done in the short spring and long summer. In that, Ullmann was absolutely correct: Nikoleta’s dying with Eckhardt had meant that the age of magic was clearly over, and the Germans had no choice but to leave it behind. And for her people, they’d no longer had to watch their taxes going towards the upkeep the Order. But what if Ullmann had killed her? “No one’s above the law. That’s what you said. That’s what you wrote. I want him investigated.”

Felix pulled his knees up and rested his chin on them. “Who’s going to do that?” he asked. “Who could I possibly ask who’d say yes?”

“It has to be you, Felix.” She slumped against him. “Ullmann’s too powerful already. We should – no,
I
should – have realised something like this might happen at some point. Spymasters.”

Felix picked up a twig and flicked it towards the fire. It fell between the logs with a puff of flame. “Once the huntmaster finds out, well: I imagine Master Ullmann’s innocence won’t count for much.”

“When this is done,” she said, “there will have to be a reckoning. Nikoleta Agana was a loyal Carinthian, and she died defending the ordinary people from a great wickedness. Her blood cries out to us for justice, and we’ve been deaf for too long.”

She felt Felix’s shoulders drop from a tense knot of bones to something more at ease. “When this is done,” he agreed.

Pre-dawn mist had settled over the fields and ran damp streamers between the tents. Büber, wrapped in a blanket, had slept out under the stars and fallen asleep to the sound of men talking low and late into the night. The music and singing had eventually died away, and more serious discussions had taken place: who would take care of whose family, who would inherit newly acquired land, or tools or a business. Fatherless children were apprenticed, widows were taken in, brothers were made.

He couldn’t remember falling asleep, and neither could he remember waking up. He was simply aware of the glimmer of light above him, and the last of the stars fading away. He lay there for a while, watching the light creep across the sky, listening to the snores and the coughing, the river running by and the wind in the trees, smelling the faint drift of ash as a breeze stirred the white embers of the cook fires and the stronger scent of pine and crushed grass.

It was time. He pulled the blanket aside and made his way quietly to the gravel bank to splash water on his face and pour it over his head. He could eat something, drink something else but water: he had a knot in his stomach that would be found in many a man that morning. If they won, then there’d be feasting and drinking. Today, that morning, better to go hungry and keep keen.

A rider trotted over the bridge, and he went to meet him.

“What’s the news?”

“They’re on their way, Master Büber. Started moving just before first light.”

“Same as before. Harass them, but don’t get caught. Do they know where we are yet?”

The rider shrugged. “Unless they’ve spies in our camp, they’ll come at us blind.”

“Let’s make it a surprise, then. Don’t stop just because you’re almost on our own lines, otherwise they’ll get suspicious.” Büber lifted his hand up to the rider, and the rider reached down to grip the huntmaster’s forearm. “Good hunting. When you get back to the col, my lord Felix will take command. Look after him.”

“It’ll be our honour, Master Büber.” The rider turned and headed back the way he’d come, and Büber turned to the guards. “Sound the horns. Everyone needs to be up. Send word to Rosenheim: if they’re not already on their way, they’ll miss all this. If anyone needs me, I’ll be with the prince.”

He walked behind the first earthwork and round to the gates. The guard stood aside for him, and he found Sophia sitting on the tree-trunk, Felix asleep at her feet under the banner of Carinthia.

“My lady,” he said quietly.

“Good morning, Master Büber.” She looked down sadly at the huddled form under the yellow and black. “If we can call this morning good.”

“Ask me tonight,” he said, and then the slow ululation of the war horns breathed out across the camp, low and insistent. “The pickets say they’re on their way. We should get ready.”

“Ready? Ready? Give us a year, two years, then we’d be ready.” She clamped her hand over her mouth, and only released it when she thought she could trust herself. “Sorry. Do you remember that night in the library? When you found Felix asleep next to me and you called me ‘my lady’?”

Büber nodded. “And you said you were a lady of nothing. I disagreed.”

“We’ve been desperate before, and we’ve come through. We’ll come through this, and we’ll earn ourselves some peace.”

Felix stirred at the second blast of the horns. Perhaps he’d thought he was dreaming them, or that he was already strapping on his sword and fastening his helmet.

“Pray to your god, my lady. Even I’m afraid.”

He almost ran back to the gate, but checked himself. He was a berserker. When the battle lines met, he would lose all sense of himself and throw himself at the enemy. Sweet darkness would fall on his mind and he would either come to surrounded by the dead, or open his eyes to the roof beams of Asgard. Perhaps the gods had been kind to Nikoleta; she would be the first face he’d see, and she’d bring him a silver-rimmed horn of honest beer to share with her.

So be it.

The Carinthians were mostly awake. He watched them from the top of the earthwork as they struggled into their armour and picked up their weapons, then he went down to meet his men.

The leader of one of his spear centuries was called Taube. He’d been a carpenter – apparently quite a good one. Then he’d had a diagonal cross cut into his face by Felix, and been sent to work in the salt mines as an alternative to being pressed. All the other men of Taube’s century could tell a similar story.

Their scars looked ugly, uglier than Büber’s own. He’d won his honestly and each was a badge of something other than murderous intent: some would call it bravery, but he preferred simply to call it life.

“Mr Taube. Line them up.”

He had another century of spears – regular militia he was going to use to screen his crossbowmen. Three centuries against the whole eastern column of dwarves. He was to throw the enemy into such confusion that they were to believe there were ten times his number in the woods. Then he was supposed to push them into the Weissach, or hang them from the trees, whichever was more convenient.

The Crossed, those who Felix called the damnati, could win their freedom – but only if Büber lived. Their liberty was down to his good report, so they had to fight. That was the bargain: otherwise it would have been too easy to kill him first, then escape.

It still might be a choice they made. But they weren’t brigands, hardened by years of living outside of the law. They weren’t mercenaries, either, selling their skills to the highest bidder. They were ordinary people who’d made a poor decision, had paid the price for that, and were still paying.

If they played their part today, they’d have paid in full.

They were ready. So were the other centuries.

Büber took delivery of a crossbow and a quiver full of sharp black quarrels. He slung them over his back, and there was nothing else left to do. “Let’s move out.”

He led them – in loose order, because marching didn’t seem right for the war he wanted to wage – across the fields and pasture at the back of the Kufstein crag. Ahead was the narrow gap between the two steep hills through which the Weissach passed on its way to the Enn. Both hills’ sides bristled with trees, dense and dark. It was almost too perfect a place for an ambush, for a few to hold out against many.

The track met the tributary, and followed it into the foothills. The trees closed around and over them. They were hidden from view, and Büber forged ahead to the rickety wooden bridge that crossed the river.

It was summer, and the water was low. The banks were still sharp and deep, though, carved by the spring melt. Once they’d crossed, they’d knock the bridge down; not that it would take much effort. It would serve as another ditch, another obstacle, and one they hadn’t had to dig with their hands.

He crossed it and stepped off the path, into the forest and up, along the flanks of the hill, moving from trunk to trunk, feet barely whispering on the needle-rich ground, brackens and grasses bending before him and springing back behind.

Now he could hear them: a steady chop-chop of an axe at the base of a tree, the rattle of their wagons, their voices calling to each other. A few paces more and he could see them, edging forward. A tree fell away from the side of the track, and the line of wagons rolled on. There were perhaps as many as ten on clearing duty, if Büber had marked them off on his fingers and stubs right.

They’d be the first to die. Then he’d set about the lead wagon. He’d been told there were a hundred such wagons, stretched in a long line up the valley, and still he wondered why. They were so ungainly and slow. They gave protection against bow fire, but, at some point, they had to come out and fight. Perhaps they feared the sky, and a vault over their heads gave them comfort.

Büber wasn’t there to give them comfort.

He pulled back and met his troops at the bridge, telling his Crossed to destroy it, while he led the other two centuries up and over the hill before spreading out along it. They knew to move as quietly as they could, not speaking. They knew to form up, crossbowmen behind on the slope with a clear view of the track, spearmen in front, crouched down and weapons ready.

He raised his finger: wait. They looked back at him. Scared as they were, they nodded, and they waited.

The bridge had gone when he returned. Taube had his spear, and something else besides: he part-carried a long, thin tree, its branches lopped.

“Are you ready to ransom yourselves?” asked Büber.

“It’s not often a man’s given a second chance,” said Taube.

“We take them when they’re offered. Let’s send these bloody dwarves back to their caves.”

They carried three trees in all, the ends already tied with thick rope, and there were three half-logs too. Büber had eaten crayfish on occasion, and supposed that winkling the dwarves out from under their wagons was going to be as difficult as shucking one of those sharp-shelled creatures.

Büber positioned the Crossed in knots of ten alongside the track, poles ready, blocks ready, encouraging them to cover their white faces with forest dirt and lie down in the undergrowth with green branches over them. When he looked up the slope, he couldn’t see either his spears or his bowmen. Then one of them moved, just a leg to shift position. When he’d finished, he vanished again.

The trap was set. All they needed now was prey.

Büber cocked his head to one side, listening again. The low rumble of wheels, the break of a stick under foot, the incoherent bark of voices, the rushing water hissing down to his left.

He lifted the crossbow off his back. Not as good as the one he’d lost, but decent all the same. He worked the lever and the arms of the bow creaked. The string clicked into place. He slid the quiver around so that it was in easy reach, and plucked a bolt out. Laying it carefully on the stock, he raised the tiller to his shoulder.

He was one man, standing in the road. That was what they saw. A dwarf reached out and banged on the side of the lead wagon. It stopped, and the dwarf shouted to whoever was inside.

He was well within range, and Büber killed him, punching the quarrel straight through his breastplate. While the rest of the clearing party took cover, he reloaded.

The wagon started to roll forward again, with dwarves behind it, huddled to its rear axle so as not to show any part of themselves.

But it wasn’t Büber they should have been worried about.

Most of them took two or three bolts, which was wasteful and their centurion should have prevented that, but gods, it was quick. A single volley and they were all down, most of them dead, the few who weren’t left shrieking and trying to drag themselves away.

The wagons stopped, then started again, rumbling towards him. There was only so much he could do now, but what he could do was this: he walked towards the lead one, right up to the narrow eye-slit in the front of its angled face, and loosed his bolt through it.

He hit someone for certain, and he stepped aside as the wagon faltered, then carried on past him.

From the undergrowth, three long poles clattered out, pushing right beneath the hem of the wagon’s wooden skirt. Men leapt out and, as the poles lifted up high, they slid semicircular blocks underneath them.

Then the poles were hauled down again, aided by the ropes that the men had tied to the ends. The poles caught the rim, raised it up so that the wheels all along one side spun uselessly to a halt, and still they kept lifting. The levers opened up a gap of two feet, three feet, more, tipping the wagon up to expose the dwarves inside.

The Crossed rushed the wagon. They jabbed furiously with their spears, roaring out of their own pain, and again, within moments, every dwarf was down, dead or dying. The levers loosed their hold and the wagon banged back down, partly breaking in the process, the green, unseasoned timber and crude construction failing at the first test.

Limbs sprawled out from underneath, and the mud and stones of the track were stained red.

“The next one,” ordered Büber.

The teams with the poles briskly picked up their equipment and moved to the next in line. There were a full century of wagons, and it would take the better part of the day to work their way through them at this rate. Not that the dwarves were going to let them do that, sitting mutely and meekly until it was their turn.

They had the second one over in short order, being more confident now in their lifting, certain of the weight. They cut down the dwarves inside, and, with a final shove, sent the wagon crashing down off the track and half into the river below.